KYLE, Texas — Students at Hemphill Elementary School in Kyle will have to make up the time they missed while crews worked to remove mold from their school, but it's not clear exactly how they'll do it just yet.
Tim Savoy, a spokesperson for Hays CISD, said students were able to return to school on Monday, Nov. 13, after crews found mold in more than a dozen classrooms the week before. The district hired a professional crew to review the mold.
Savoy said crews are still finishing construction work at the base of the school's walls, but they will finish that up during the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks.
He also said the district is currently trying to figure out how Hemphill Elementary students will make up the time they missed.
"Since it turned into seven days [that crews were working], we're going to try to recover some of that time next semester with a combination of adding minutes to each day and using some staff workdays as full school days," Savoy said on Tuesday. "But [we] haven't finished exactly what the makeup time will look like."
Getting rid of the mold cost the district more than $850,000. During a board meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 28, district leaders approved paying for those repairs. They also approved a resolution to make sure workers from Hemphill get paid for the nine days they couldn't work.
Savoy previously told KVUE that Hays CISD has not had any complaints of anyone getting sick from the mold.
"Not that we are aware of, but we did have our nurse send out information about the type of mold we found. We have RNs still at all our campuses," he said. "We asked anybody that feels like they've had symptoms or allergies they cannot identify what's causing it, to reach out to the nurse and we are going to follow up to all the students there."